The planned sports ministry would introduce a program to produce elite athletes, broaden sports education and address issues stemming from Taiwan’s declining birthrate, Deputy Minister of Education Chang Liao Wan-chien (張廖萬堅) said yesterday.
The new ministry — which is to be established next year — would be an entirely new agency, not merely an administrative upgrade of the Sports Administration, Chang Liao told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times).
Efforts to reform sports in Taiwan over the past few years have focused on benefits for athletes and their welfare, as well as boosting funding, but the ministry would also focus on increasing affinity for sports among the public in line with President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments on the issue, Chang Liao said.
Photo: Huang Yun-hsuan, Taipei Times
Chang Liao, who is 59, said that he has seen a drop in school participation in baseball.
An illustration of the trend was that when he was a child, 15 out of 30 elementary schools in the city had baseball teams.
However, by the time the 2000s, there were only four out of 60, he said, citing a survey conducted by his office.
The decline in the number of teams was the result of sports training programs that became increasingly elitist and focused on performance above all else, Chang Liao said.
With birthrates declining, sports education and training policies must change, and more effort needs to be made to encourage the public to take up sports, he said, adding that the program to be implemented by the planned ministry would focus on that.
There must be ways to allow students who excel in their studies to also excel in sports, which would help with people’s well-being as more people get more exercise, Chang Liao said.
Students would not need to feel that they had to be good enough to play professionally when they graduate, but rather the exposure would cultivate an interest in sports and exercise, he said.
Children should be given the chance to play sports, derive the benefits from doing so and keep the memories of their exploits on the field or court, he said, adding that the program would seek to enable that.
The program would expose more people to sports that were previously exclusive to top athletes, he said.
It would broaden the pool of players Taiwan could draw from when looking for athletes to represent the country, he added.
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